Underwear
by Spring Zephyr
Summary: "That's my underwear you're throwing around. I can question whatever I want to." Hugh and Nate can be dumb and oblivious in two separate ways.


**Not particularly big on tumblr. However someone pointed out a certain page...**

"**Imagine Person A of your OTP raiding Person B's underwear drawer". Which lead Zephyr to think, "Yeah, I can write this to fit Nate and Hugh". So... there you go. **

**Hugh and Nate being embarrassments together. I love the idea of them being an incredibly stupid couple sometimes. They would also get into the most pointless fights and arguments– **

**I call Hugh's little sister "Valerie", by the way.**

Hugh stepped into his room to find Nate, as expected. What he hadn't expected was to find his underwear becoming a messy, steadily growing pile on the carpeted floor as Nate frantically dug through his dresser drawer. The mixed expression of determination and frenzy on the other boy's face kept Hugh silent for a solid seven seconds, and definitely less offended than he would have been under normal circumstances. Even enough to remember that, hey, he hadn't remembered to vacuum for the past month, and now he was going to have a pile of laundry to do as well, because maybe his bedroom floor was starting to look a little gross.

"Hey, do you plan on cleaning that up?"

Unlike Nate, he had standards.

Crossing his arms, Hugh waited impatiently for an answer. And, having received none, he eventually gave up on waiting and spoke again, a little louder, to make sure Nate couldn't ignore him like the first time. "_Nate_! What are you-"

Hugh was hushed immediately.

"This is very important, don't question it!"

"That's my underwear you're throwing around. I can question whatever I want to."

Nate was going to reach the bottom of the drawer soon, he was sure of it. The only reason it had taken him this long was because he'd already emptied his sock drawer in another corner of the room, and there was evidence he'd checked every other drawer in the room as well.

Either way, Hugh thought he had brought up a very good point.

"Okay..." but since Nate still wasn't being very responsive, Hugh supposed he was going to have to lead him to answering instead. "It doesn't look like you're doing something _indecent _or anything, so I'm just going to take a guess: Maybe you're looking for something? I have no idea what, but I can't think of any other explanation."

"Exactly!"

Through the bad mood, Hugh could almost see half a dozen sarcastic possibilities running through Nate's mind. Nate didn't get upset often, but he it wasn't uncommon for him to turn uncharacteristically snappish and rude when he did. Since at least one of them needed to be reasonable inside their relationship at all times in order to keep it running smoothly, Hugh grit his teeth and was ready to bear with whatever rude remark was bound to come out of Nate's mouth this time – it surprisingly didn't happen.

"Your sister stole my visor again, and I can't go home without it," Nate explained.

There was some obvious constraint in his voice, effort in biting back the annoyance and the sarcasm, but Hugh was content that he'd at least made the effort, regardless of whether it succeeded or not.

It faded immediately in a moment of distraction: "Oooh, these are nice! You actually wear these?"

An in-depth discussion on the kinds of underwear he wore was not exactly what Hugh wanted to get into, and he could only imagine the kinds of images running through Nate's head right now. A few annoyed and red-faced shouts later, Nate relented and tossed the pair he was holding currently into the pile with the rest.

"So Valerie took your hat! How does this relate to raiding my room, exactly?"

Hugh just wanted Nate out as quickly as possible now, and for his mother to stop shopping for him. Black and silk and he never wore them, because it would have been just too embarrassing, but now Nate was going to expect him to – and they weren't even in that part of their relationship yet. It was partly his mother's fault, for not understanding the connotation behind these things. He didn't even wear boxers normally – to uncomfortable to be athletic in.

Without hesitation, Nate replied, "I asked her where I could find my visor, and this is what she told me!" After his recent discovery and Hugh's last outburst, he sounded a little more cheerful, which Hugh resented.

"Does it even look like your visor could be hidden in there? It wouldn't fit! You should have been able to see that even without having to throw everything out! She's playing a prank on you, Nate."

Not a very funny one at that.

And he considered, a second too late, that perhaps Nate wouldn't have particularly minded an excuse to go searching through his intimates either.

Valerie was still a giggling five year old though – it wasn't her fault that "underwear" was probably the most scandalous word in her vocabulary. In fact, Hugh could almost see in his mind the way she'd answered Nate's question: trying overly hard not to laugh – because, golly, wasn't "underwear" a hilarious word? – and hiding her childish grin behind a hand so maybe Nate wouldn't see that she was lying. Except not even Nate could be that gullible–

"If it's not in here, then where do you think it is!?"

–Only he was.

If there was ever a time when Hugh _might_ have been slightly annoyed with his precious younger sibling, well... now would possibly be that time.

"Probably on her head, genius. Or check one of her stuffed animals, but I swear I just saw her walking down the hallway with it a minute ago."

Nate perked up immediately, full attention on Hugh now.

"Really!?"

"Rea–"

Nate rushed past, pausing only barely long enough to deliver a short kiss on Hugh's cheek, and sometime when he was probably halfway down the hall, Hugh heard him yell back a "Thank you". He stared at the door, in the direction Nate had gone, for a few minutes feeling unexpectedly confused. Then he eyed the mess left on the floor and sighed.

Speaking to no one in particular, he muttered, "...It's not like I'm letting you leave without cleaning this up, you know."

If Nate's mother wanted him home by a certain time, she was just going to have to wait. Hugh wasn't the one who needed to take responsibility for a mess he hadn't created.

* * *

Nate actually screamed when he entered his room. It was with some reluctance that he had finally conceeded to do the laundry after he'd messed around with Hugh's things – when Hugh did the same to him, at least everything was folded neatly and put back into place once he was done looking so the additional time spent cleaning loads of laundry wasn't necessary.

He hadn't expected a much different reaction though, and his attention was definitely focused elsewhere. And thus Hugh was mostly unfazed when Nate continued to stomp into his room and yell.

"What exactly are you doing!?"

"What does it look like?" Hugh muttered.

For someone who wore mostly wetsuits underneath his regular clothes, Nate seemed to own an unreasonable number of briefs.

"I told your mother about the underwear story and she told me I could find something interesting if I searched yours."

"Traitor!" Nate screamed immediately.

For a second, Hugh thought he might start running back to the kitchen to yell at his mother for embarrassing him, but he settled on remaining here instead. His face looked very pale as Hugh continued digging, but he didn't do anything to stop it.

"Thi... This is revenge, isn't it? Why are you two completely against me!? Hugh, look, if it makes you feel any better, I'm really sorry about that one ti–"

"Aha! Found it!" Nate actually jumped a little. Hugh turned to him, smirking triumphantly with something in hand. "Seriously, they actually make super hero underwear in sizes larger than, uh, meant for five year olds? And you wear them?"

"What the hell, man? That's really personal!"

Hugh was about to make another sarcastic remark, when something else in the drawer caught his attention. Nate was just a second too late in his decision to tackle him. He had a look on his face that was, while not quite grim, extremely sure of the fact that he was no longer laughing.

There were worse crimes to commit, Nate assured himself, attempting to chuckle nervously through it. It was actually kind of Hugh's fault anyway, for trusting Nate enough to leave him alone with his laundry. He really should have known better.

"Nate, what do you have _these_ for!?"

"W-what? It's not like you were going to miss them. Wait, don't tell me you actually would have worn those one day? For me?"

Despite the situation, Nate found himself unable to control his laughter. Hugh was not amused, and even less so once Nate informed him exactly how hilarious the look on his face was – and that it was almost worth getting caught for.

In the end, it was Hugh tackling Nate to the ground, and also Hugh who got to experience the infuriating powerlessness of Nate being in control, even while Nate was laughing so hard he was almost crying.

But the "making up" part afterward was worth it, for both of them.

**...I'm in a terrible mood and was mostly writing this for myself. If it happened to make someone laugh, good?**

**I mentioned to a few people I was taking hiatus, but it ended up being much longer than planned, because... meh. Things don't really go my way. Still not "back" for sure, but I will try to get some stuff posted and fix my older GreySky submissions too.**

**Thank you for your patience.**


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